Joe also learned pig-spleen weather predicting from his father. But Joe is adamant that the pig must be slaughtered in the fall or early winter; a spring spleen, says Joe, is not nearly as accurate. His method predicts only temperature, not precipitation. In the fall of 1997, Joe slaughtered his pig and pulled out a spleen that was even all the way through. This, he says, was one of the first indications that Saskatchewan would experience an even-tempered winter. Never mind that meteorologists were hysterical about the phenomenon called El Niño; or that onion skins and corn husks were thick. Joe predicted a mild winter with just a few cold days, and his temperature predictions were right on the money.

Plato wrote:Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains of the elements, and mingled them in much the same manner; they were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and third degree. And having made it he divided the whole mixture into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star; and having there placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to which their first birth would be one and the same for all,-no one should suffer a disadvantage at his hands; they were to be sown in the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior race would here after be called man. Now, when they should be implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing some part of their bodily substance, then in the first place it would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions; in the second place, they must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them; if they conquered these they would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them, unrighteously. He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence.